How does Kameleoon handle cookies?

Cookies management

Kameleoon uses the cookie system, necessary to store data during an A/B test. This cookie is positioned on your domain name, not Kameleoon’s, which allows you to manipulate it if you need to.

Setting up Kameleoon cookie

To change the settings of Kameleoon cookies, login to your personal account and go to the “Configured sites” page.

Click on the “Advanced configuration” button for the website of your choice.

You will arrive on the “Advanced options” page, as you can see on the left tab.

The “Personalized cookie” option will give you the possibility to change the domain name and the duration of the cookie.

Changing the domain name

If you have several subdomains, it can be useful to change the domain name by default. Indeed, each subdomain will generate its own cookie, and it is recommended to gather their information to improve data management.

To change the domain name, simply fill in the domain name you want to use.

To unify the information, put together from these domain names, we will indicate the main domain in the “Enter the domain name” field in your personal space. In our example, it will be this URL:

https://mozilla.org/

Changing the duration

By default, the duration of the cookie is 30 days. You can change this duration from your personal space.

Disabling the use of cookies

By default, Kameleoon stores A/B tests data (variation and test IDs) in a cookie, positioned by the browser in the visitor’s computer.

If however you do not want to use this system, you can also use the browser local storage to store the A/B test data. This mode is available on all browsers supported by Kameleoon.

To enable this option, check the “Use the browser local storage” in the advanced options.

Data recorded on the browser

Cookies Kameleoon

Here is a complete list of all data positioned in your visitors’ browsers by Kameleoon during an A/B test.

The term ID below represents the global identifying number of a test generated by Kameleoon. All data can be saved in cookies or in the browser local storage. You can personalize this option in your personal space.

kameleoonExperiment-{ID} = contains the ID of the displayed variation. This information is necessary to make sure Kameleoon always displays the same variation to a visitor coming back on your website. The name of the information has a variable part with the test ID. There can be as many KameleoonExperiment data as there are tests on your website. By default, the duration of this cookie is 30 days, but you can customize it.

kameleoonRedirect-{ID}(Optional) = This information is only temporarily present on the visitor’s computer and is only useful for split URLs A/B tests. It allows Kameleoon to get the information back if the visitor was redirected before the data were sent to the reporting tool. Once Kameleoon gets the information back, it is deleted. The duration of this cookie is 1 day.

kameleoonData = this data is always stored in the browser local storage. It contains information about a visitor: date of first visit and visits table (with date and start, number of pages view, end of the visit, previous page, landing page). These data can be use for a priori targeting. For instance, we could want to launch a test on visitors arriving via an AdWords campaign and having visited the website 3 times in the day.

KameleoonVisit : This data is used to make sure all pages have been displayed during the same visit. The duration of this cookie is 365 days.

KameleoonOptout : allow your visitor to cancel the loading of Kameleoon by clicking on a link provided on your website. The duration of this cookie is 45 days.

Information obligations

LocalStorage data allow to target visitors according to technical, behavioral or contextual criteria. These data are stored to custom your website according to the targets.

Measurement cookies (named KameleoonVisitIdentifier) are stored if you are using Kameleoon reporting tool (il you are using your own Analytics solution, this cookie is not stored).

Even if it is possible, is some cases, to be exempt from consent (see below), we recommend to follow the CNIL recommendations regarding the collection mode of visitors consent. The visitors must be informed, with a banner, about:

The precise purpose of cookies and LocalStorage data;

The fact that continue to browse your website is equivalent to a consent;

The possibility of refusing the storage on the terminal or to withdraw it at any moment;

The ways and means of the procedure to consent or refuse all of some of the LocalStorage data and cookies. To do so, simply add a link on your page about privacy. On click on this link, the #kameleoonOptout=true parameter will be added at the end of the URL of your website. This will create a KameleoonOptout cookie on the visitor’s browser and disable completely Kameleoon. Here is an example of HTML code: